I watched it and confirmed my decision not to pay one red cent to view another. It stunk and was expectedly anti-Trump.

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I think it was kind of a stretch to see an "anti-Trump" message in there. So the Klingons wanted to unify their shattered empire. It wasn't like they were all wearing red hats that said, "Make Q'onoS Great Again"

Ah, remember the good old days when the Klingons were a clumsy metaphor for the USSR?

E). I don’t like being manipulated and the entire episode was obviously written as just a teaser to the greater TV audience to reel people in the last few minutes like little fish as a “to-be-continued-elsewhere” episode so that you would WANT to jump over and sign up to CBS Direct to see what happens next.

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Agreed, this was very slimy on the part of CBS/Viacom. They could have produced this show for CW and gotten a respectable audience, but they are trying to milk Trek fans for more money.

[I think they made this clear it takes place around 2250, which is before TOS and after Enterprise.

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Yeah, I probably missed it squirming in my seat as I thought how I had looked forward to this show all week and it turned out to be unbelievably dull. I mean, they spent a quarter of the show wandering in the desert (I missed the reason why) scrawling out a PERFECT star trek logo in the sand while determining the arrival of a storm down to the second, which later turned out to be wrong? And why did the ship have to come down so low? No transporters, steamed up windows or what? I saved it on my DVR and will watch it again for the things I missed as I was mainly busy studying the production of the show (I have studied television production for decades) rather than listening to the lines.

C). It seemed to present a very PC universe with a veiled political message aimed at a very young audience rather than those who grew up with Star Trek.

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Meh, I think this is a case of you seeing something you want to see there.

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I'm not talking about any Trump parallels, I agree that I didn't see that, I was speaking more of the choices for gender and race; it seemed to closely parallel the world that schools teach these days, and this show just a reaffirmation of the same themes. There were hardly any whites! And few men in minor and fleeting roles. I guess CBS has forgotten that Sci-Fi is mainly a venue for guys.

I should also point out that the purpose here would be to introduce Trek to a new audience. The original Trek Audience is old and we don't buy stuff.

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Are you kidding? I'm a master model builder and have over $400 invested in parts alone with more to buy just for a model of the Enterprise, and am looking at buying a couple hundred dollars more worth of books (mainly on the original series).

Meh, I can't blame Roddenberry's kid for that when Dad was just as bad about that sort of thing. This "Roddenberry as a visionary" crap was really a lot of self-promotion.

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I don't think so. Gene was an LA cop who worked his way into TV writing and wrote and produced many episodes and shows before Star Trek, with Star Trek being a revolution in television and science fiction with a very special message for the future far ahead of its time that has endeared the show to fans for over half a century.

Maybe, but I don't think folks would accept the cardboard sets of the OS today.

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No, but it makes the original Enterprise Bridge look a far step back in engineering. Part of the problem with them trying to go back in time. They would be better to continue the story forward in time, but that is a LOT harder to do on many levels.

except Michelle Yoeh is 55, so I don't have a problem with this. Good Lord, she's the same age I am? Yeah, I know, it's really hard to tell how old Asian women are.

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You mean Tan Sri Dato' Seri Michelle Yeoh Choo-Kheng? ;^) I never heard of her, don't know where they found her and would have never guessed she was 55. She's from Malaysia and the set was too dark to make out much of her other than she was apparently "asian." I saw no endearing quality of anyone on the bridge that would make me want to continue watching the show.

I think it was kind of a stretch to see an "anti-Trump" message in there. So the Klingons wanted to unify their shattered empire. It wasn't like they were all wearing red hats that said, "Make Q'onoS Great Again"

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You missed the whole speech by the Klingon cult leader about racial purity, etc.? In pre-Trump Trek, Klingons were only a warrior race, not a racist race (other than thinking other races were soft).

And, did you miss the theme about making Q'onoS Great Again, unifying the empire, even if there weren't red hats involved?

You mean Tan Sri Dato' Seri Michelle Yeoh Choo-Kheng? ;^) I never heard of her, don't know where they found her and would have never guessed she was 55. She's from Malaysia and the set was too dark to make out much of her other than she was apparently "asian." I saw no endearing quality of anyone on the bridge that would make me want to continue watching the show.

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Neither did I.

Usually, they spend most of a first episode introducing the characters, which really wasn't done here. Later episodes are going to have gay character introduced, which I know will drive the wingnuts into a tizzy.

They aren't even going to get around to introducing the ship for a while.

I saw no endearing quality of anyone on the bridge that would make me want to continue watching the show.

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That's a big problem with the show. I don't see many Trek fans being eager to follow the adventures of Michael Burnham (the main character, a woman with a man's name). Political Correctness aside, she's not very likable or compelling. I'm sure her character will be tweaked to make her more likable, but they'll never make her more compelling.

I saw no endearing quality of anyone on the bridge that would make me want to continue watching the show.

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That's a big problem with the show. I don't see many Trek fans being eager to follow the adventures of Michael Burnham (the main character, a woman with a man's name). Political Correctness aside, she's not very likable or compelling. I'm sure her character will be tweaked to make her more likable, but they'll never make her more compelling.

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The missing magic is Gene Roddenberry's keen talent for building chemistry and camaraderie between key characters. It makes the characters real. TOS and TNG had it in spades. Not so much for DS9, Voyager and Enterprise, far worse for Discovery.

I thought the show was pretty good. While the main character was too much a copy of Spock, that might work for a younger audience that isn't as familiar with Spock. She has the similar Vulcan-but-struggles-with-emotion vibe, but instead of actually being Vulcan she was raised by them.

Bryan Fuller has never made an action-packed show. Wonderfalls, Dead Like Me, and Pushing Daisies were all quirky comedies, and Hannibal was a slow, tense drama/thriller. I wasn't expecting this show to be full of action, yet it had plenty. Calling it boring because of the pacing sounds like a person who should watch the reboot movies.

I hate how changeable the Klingon species has been over the course of the various series.

There was too much spoken Klingon with subtitles throughout. I'm not a big fan of subtitles, it forces a person to change and narrow focus from the entire show to the words, I think it was over used.

The court scene at the end was entirely overdone, with the lighting hiding the faces of the judges, and backlighting Burnham. I actually expected it to be a dream sequence.

Those phasers looked pretty old-school, I liked that. The out-of-date transporter was a nice touch. There are still problems with the way current visual technology makes the show look more hi-tech, but I think they did a decent job of trying to give it a time-period correct feel.

I'm not willing to pay the monthly fee for CBS All Access to watch this show. However, if I have an opportunity to watch it; if someone I know gets All Access, or if it comes out on Netflix or something like that eventually, or someone gets the DVD of the season, I will certainly watch it. This is the first time since TNG I've felt like a Trek show might be worth watching more than the first episode, but it didn't wow me so much I'd pay a monthly fee for it.

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